Sep 16 2017 Sat
1:23 am PHT
As I mentioned on Facebook, a micro-hobby that I picked up recently is applying perspective correction on photos of NHCP historical markers in Wikimedia Commons such that they look as if they were photographed head-on and with horizontal edges looking horizontal and vertical edges looking vertical. An example result is the corrected photo of the Fort of San Pedro historical marker shown below.
Jan 30 2011 Sun
6:22 pm PHT
I blogged in 2008 that if ever I would get a permanent tattoo, I would get something like the one pictured above. This is a stylized Greek letter phi which represents the golden ratio. The golden ratio is my favorite number by far and I just love how it is crops up in so many places and how it provides a nice blend of mathematics and art. I love it so much that I made that logo for my amateur QuickBASIC software “company”.
Jan 13 2011 Thu
1:21 am PHT
Would you believe that the missing Batanes, and the misplaced markers for the Tubbataha Reefs and the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River are not the only problems with the map of the Philippines found on the new peso banknotes?
Dec 20 2010 Mon
12:50 am PHT
I was excited to see the new peso banknote designs that the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas unveiled this month and like many other people, I approve of the general graphic design as well as the inclusion of Cory Aquino on the 500-peso bill (a very popular request ever since the former President passed away). I also very much like the unified theme of featuring (mostly) natural tourist spots, fabric designs, and (mostly) endemic fauna on the back of the banknotes.
Feb 04 2009 Wed
11:48 pm PHT
I posted before that I went to the first Form Function & Class mini-conference last October 30. This was organized by the fledging Philippine Web Designers Organization and they have a whole series of such mini-conferences. I wasn’t able to attend the November mini-conference and so I resolved to attend the January 22 event and to muster enough courage to actually give a talk (and I indicated so at the sign-up sheet, though I had no topic at hand then). Unfortunately, one week before the mini-conference, I still had no topic. After wracking my brain, I settled on giving an introduction to Textpattern, the content management system (CMS) that I’ve used on Vista Pinas and Blogenyo.
Sep 01 2008 Mon
11:19 pm PHT
Remember the Wikimedia illustration-for-pay project I blogged about last year? Hmmm, maybe not. (So read that blog post! Go on. I’ll wait.) anyway, the first round of illustration requests started last month and will run until early October. There are 50 needed illustrations in various fields such as biology (jellyfish cross-section), mathematics (Császár polyhedron), engineering (airborne wind turbine), and computer science (application virtualization). All but two of the illustrations will have a payout of $40 while the remaining will be worth $15.
May 07 2008 Wed
1:55 am PHT
かわいい! Meet Wikipe-tan. She’s the unofficial mascot and moe anthropomorph of Wikipedia. Here, she’s wearing the baro’t saya, the female national costume of the Philippines. Isn’t that cute? 
Apr 25 2008 Fri
11:45 pm PHT
You should know by now that tomorrow, April 26, there will be two back-to-back bloggers events. The first is the iBlog4: The 4th Philippine Blogging Summit at Malcolm Hall in U.P. Diliman, and the second is the 88DB.com Bloggers’ Night. These blogger events are very good ways of meeting other bloggers that you have only conversed with online as well as an excellent venue for networking and gaining more friends and acquaintances.
Mar 19 2008 Wed
1:07 am PHT
Two weekends ago, I finally got around to creating the locator maps of the municipalities of Dinagat Islands, the newest province of the Philippines that seceded from Surigao del Norte in 2006, for use in Wikipedia. Locator maps are maps that show the where a place is in a larger area. In this particular case, I am showing the location of the municipality within the province of Dinagat Islands. Shown below is a rendering of the locator map for the town of Tubajon.
Feb 26 2008 Tue
12:14 am PHT
Found via Kottke is this absolutely geeky blog showing off science- and math-related tattoos from scientists, mathematicians, programmers, and other academics. I find it to be a wonderful blend of the rebellious and the geek.
Nov 25 2007 Sun
2:45 pm PHT
I’m extremely pleased to announce the launch of my new blog, Blogenyo! As you can probably tell from the accompanying illustrations, Blogenyo is a webcomic and its focus is on events, intrigues, controversies, issues, and trends that surround the Pinoy blogosphere. The year 2007 has seen a lot of such things happening and I think it’s quite timely that a comic strip about it is launched. 
Nov 07 2007 Wed
1:31 pm PHT
In an announcement that’s sure to raise a whole lot of questions, the Wikimedia Foundation (the organization that handles Wikipedia as well as other free-content websites like Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikiquote) has resolved that it has received a $20,000 grant from Philip Greenspun, an Internet entrepreneur, to create various free-licensed illustrations for use on Wikipedia and other websites.
Jul 21 2007 Sat
8:31 pm PHT
I did not expect to win the Proudly Pinoy logo design contest that I joined. As I mentioned before, these types of free-for-all contests is like winning a lottery. Almost.
Jul 13 2007 Fri
12:09 am PHT
Well, I’ve decided to join the Proudly Pinoy logo contest where people submit up to three logos depicting the concept of being proudly Pinoy. The winning logo can then be used by Filipino websites to display their Pinoy pride and the winning logo-maker gets a cool cash prize of 10,000 pesos. Shown to the right are the entries I submitted.
Jun 26 2007 Tue
6:26 pm PHT
Here’s the second part of the story behind Lakbayan. You should also read the first part or the launch blog entry if you haven’t done so.
Jun 12 2007 Tue
1:31 am PHT
Today is the 109th anniversary of the Philippine Declaration of Independence and I’m celebrating it by launching the beta version of Lakbayan! See how much of the Philippines you have visited! To whet your appetite and give you a preview of what to expect, my personal result is shown below.
May 18 2007 Fri
1:07 am PHT
What if we had vehicle signages like this? (You probably won’t get this unless you’re Filipino.
Feb 26 2007 Mon
11:32 pm PHT
Last weekend, I played around with the public domain data obtained by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission or SRTM. I wanted to use this data to create topographic maps that I can contribute to Wikipedia.
Feb 21 2007 Wed
11:33 pm PHT
Check this out. There’s this guy who made his own annual report (like the one’s made by companies for their investors) but this one is about his own life during the past year. The layout, graphics, and color scheme is top-notch. The depth, breadth, and subject matter of information is interesting. And the individual statistical data points border on the anal. (He documented how many times he went out drinking, what he drank, and which bar he went to—can you believe that?—though there is an inebriated disclaimer. Hehehe.
Feb 15 2007 Thu
11:46 pm PHT
Nice. After the very successful Blog Parteeh now comes the first ever Philippine Blog Awards. I think the decision to have a party first before the awards was a really good call by the organizers. This makes it easier to drum up wide sponsor support and media and blog publicity.
Dec 26 2006 Tue
12:12 pm PHT
On an infographic whim, I decided to create a map showing the train lines and stations I visited during my last two trips to Japan. Follow the thumbnail link above to see the full-size version.
Dec 12 2006 Tue
9:52 pm PHT
I have the lucky timing of being in Tokyo during the time a selection of M. C. Escher’s works were being displayed at an exhibit in Shibuya. The Dutch M. C. Escher has been one of my favorite artists, ever since I saw his work, Relativity, in a Childcraft volume from World Book Encyclopedia. If Relativity seems familiar, it’s because the concept has been used many times, the most notable reference for me being the climax scene in the movie, Labyrinth. In fact, Relativity can be seen hanging on the wall of the bedroom of Sarah, the movie’s lead character.
Dec 28 2005 Wed
10:17 pm PHT
If I’m going to put up a café, I’ll name it Coffeeright. And its slogan will be: “You have the right to good coffee.”
Nov 12 2005 Sat
6:22 pm PHT
I’m sure most of the readers have read Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons. The novel prominently featured several ambigrams in its story. And those ambigrams were really beautiful. They were commissioned by Brown from John Langdon, a freelance graphic artist that specializes in creating ambigrams, logotypes, and paintings that feature words. It should be mentioned that the character Robert Langdon was probably named after John Langdon. (Remember that Angels & Demons was the first Robert Langdon novel, not The Da Vinci Code).
Oct 02 2005 Sun
8:08 pm PHT
I’m planning to move this blog to a new location since it is really just squatting on a domain that really has no relationship to the parent website that’s been dormant for several months now.
Jan 15 2005 Sat
11:30 am PHT
My youger sister bought Kitchie Nadal’s self-titled debut album on CD. I like her songs and I like the design of the album! No, I don’t plan on making a review of the album since I haven’t heard all the songs on it yet but I’ll talk about the songs that I have heard and I’ll comment on the really cool layout of the album liner.
Aug 21 2004 Sat
7:14 pm PHT
As may be noticed by the extremely small readership of this blog, I’ve redesigned. The new style is called Airlight because, obviously, I wanted it to feel light and airy (maaliwalas, my sister has commented). The previous style, which I now call Columnar, looked too conventional for me. It looked good and all but it was missing some personality—it looked too much like many of the other blogs out there.
vaes9 is the personal/tech weblog of Eugene Alvin Villar aka seav, a not so innocent yet sometimes naïve software developer calling Metro Manila his home.
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